


Too Much Of A Coincidence

by currentlywriting (Selinenuli)



Category: Renegades - Marissa Meyer
Genre: Angst, Family, Family Feels, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:00:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27149065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selinenuli/pseuds/currentlywriting
Summary: Nova has a gut feeling about Maggie, which turns out to be more of a sisterly instinct.
Relationships: Evie Artino | Margaret White | Magpie & Nova Artino | Nightmare, Nova Artino | Nightmare/Adrian Everhart | Sketch
Comments: 5
Kudos: 36





	Too Much Of A Coincidence

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this for a school assignment (I got a 100), and wanted to share.

It had been three months.

Three painfully long months, and Nova was finally starting to feel like herself again.  
She was finally starting to feel like she knew who that self was.

Long gone was the expectation to be arrested, to be sent back to Cragmoor, for the Renegades to regret their decision. She was Nightmare, after all.

A supervillain. An Anarchist.

Or at least, she used to be.

Now, she wasn’t sure what she was.

A Renegade, maybe. Probably. Officially, at least.

It was just like before she was revealed, when she was still undercover, when she was still pretending, lying, when she was Nova McClain.

It took a long time for her to get used to being Nova Artino again.

An even longer time to shake the fear that Ace was going to show up, or Honey, or Ingrid, to tell her to focus, get back on mission.

They never did.  
They were too dead to do so.

The fear faded.

As did the accusations, the whispers, the hard glares.  
They were replaced by nothing more than curious looks.

That she could handle.

It was still annoying though, as she was making her way through the headquarters cafeteria.

She focused on her path instead of on the looks, on finding a table while Adrian got the food.

It had been three months, and she was finally starting to feel like herself again.

Herself, who made sarcastic off hand comments and counted all the possible exits, and noticed the suspicious way Magpie was making her way through the crowd.

She was bumping into people, a lot more than was normal to do so.  
She was pickpocketing.  
Which wasn’t that much of a surprise, but still angered Nova to no end.

Magpie. That little thief.

Nova was happy to see Adrian approaching her, however. He directed a strict glare towards the pickpocketer, and she reluctantly emptied her pockets before slacking off.

Nova smiled.

A few minutes later the stolen objects were all returned to their previous owners, and Adrian was collapsing to a chair beside her.

Nova smirked at him

He sighed “I swear to god, one day that girl’s gonna steal from the wrong person and get in over her head.”

Nova nodded.

Speaking of Magpie…

She distantly recalled a silver bullet in that girl’s pocket.

She hadn’t had the time or mental capacity to dwell on it, then, those three months ago, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t curious.

Magpie could sense metals, so it was to be expected that she got her powers from one metal object or another.

But a bullet? That was… alarming.

Not to mention, the kid was barely twelve years old.

“Hey Adrian?”  
He glanced up at her between bites of food, sensing the question in her voice.

“Magpie mentioned getting her bullets from a bullet. D’you know anything about that?”

He shook his head “Sorry, no. Why?”

She shrugged “Just curious.”

“Hm. you don’t even like Magpie.”

“Can you really blame me?”

Adrian chuckled “You can check the records, if you really want to know. There must be something. She won’t be happy about it, though.”

Nova snickered.

Like she cared.

Checking the records would be an invasion of her privacy, though, a line that Nova was reluctant to cross.

Something told her to do so anyway.  
Call it a gut feeling.

So after her lunch with Adrian, she made her way to the Artifacts Warehouse.  
She worked there, and though her shift was not until later, she still had access.

She searched the database for anything they had on Magpie, or Maggie, or Margaret White, or whatever her actual name was.

She didn’t find much.

Nothing about how she got her powers.  
It was just a base file, like all the Renegades had.  
Name, abilities, age, address, relatives.

Magpie had no living relatives.

The file mentioned something about her family being killed by a robber, and the address of the children’s home where she lived.

Nova wrote that down on a piece of paper.

She should’ve probably let it go, then. Stopped digging.  
Was it really worth her time, looking into the past of a girl she despised?

Something in the back of her head told her to keep looking, anyways.  
Intuition, or gut feeling, or whatever.

She visited the children’s home the next day.

She introduced herself as a Renegade, and was once again surprised by how many doors the title opened. The woman in charge was very helpful, giving her a copy of everything they had on Maggie.

It wasn’t much. Only a thin file.

Still, she took it home, and looked it over as Adrian worked on a painting.

The file contained an image of a younger Maggie, a few notes on her childhood at the children’s home.

She was a troublemaker, which was no surprise.

They didn’t have her birth name, or her parents’ names. But there were mentions of a missing older sister.

They did know, however, that her parents were murdered, the same night her sister disappeared. Shot by a burglar. It said Maggie had been shot that night, too, but survived. Or came back.

Which explained the bullet.

It wasn’t uncommon for a near death experience to awaken a prodigy’s powers.

Oscar died in a fire when he was young. Ruby was stabbed.

The night Maggie’s parents were killed, she was only eleven months old.

After the burglar left, Captain Chromium himself had stopped by the scene and declared both Maggie and her parents dead. Meaning she had appeared dead, at least.

Nova scoffed, once again amazed by the council’s incompetence.

It was ten years ago.

Her heart skipped a beat as she spotted the date.

A date she knew all too well.

What a coincidence.

Maggie’s parents dying the same night as Nova’s.

Her sister disappeared the same night Ace had taken Nova in.

Her being shot the same night as Evie.

Too much of a coincidence.

Nova felt something in her stomach drop. She scanned the page for more info, anything.  
Her heart skipped another beat as she spotted an address. The apartment where Maggie was found.

The address, as the date, was an address Nova knew all too well.

Her childhood home.

The apartment where her parents and sister were killed.

Or not.

“Nova?”

Glancing up, she was instantly reminded of Adrian’s presence. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“What’s wrong?”

She couldn’t find the words.

Adrian frowned. “May I?” he asked, and reached for the file. Nova nodded, and waited as he flipped through it.

The frown only deepened.

“Wait, that’s the date of your parents’...” he glanced at her, questioning. But there was no need to complete that sentence.

Adrian knew that date all too well. It was also the night his mother was killed. On her way to protect Nova’s family, no less.

He kept reading, and Nova held her breath. Needing to know she hadn’t been mistaken, she hadn’t got it wrong. Needing to know it was real.

Adrian’s frown deepened the further he read. “Nova, that’s - “ he met her eyes, and trailed off.

Nova’s breath caught in her throat, her hands covered her mouth.

It was real.

How could it be real?

She had been six years old.

She saw the gunman, heard her mother scream, the gunshots.

She hid in the closet.

She had forgotten Evie.

Little baby Evie, only eleven months old.

She had been asleep, left in the other room. Nova had been too scared to go back for her.

But then she heard her start crying. Then the gunshot.

That deafening silence.

But she never actually saw Evie, did she?

Ace took her, and to this day, she had never gone back to that apartment.

At six years old, it never occurred to her to ask about the bodies.

“Nova - “ started Adrian, and she took a shuddering breath. “Your sister…”

She shook her head.

No. This could not be real.

How?

How could Evie have survived?

But in the back of her head, Nova already knew the answer.

The same way Oscar could inhale so much smoke he stopped breathing, but somehow came back from the dead. The same way Ruby could be stabbed three times only for her blood to turn to stones.

Nova released a shaky breath and closed her eyes.

This was real.

Somehow, this was real.

Maggie was Evie.

Maggie was her sister, long lost and back from the dead.

Maggie, who certainly looked the part. 

Maggie, who was snarky and sneaky and not unlike Nova herself.

Maggie, who had an unusual attraction to Nova’s bracelet.

The same bracelet made by her father. Their father.

Maggie, who most definitely hated Nova.

She felt tears in the corners of her eyes, and Adrian’s hand on her shoulders.  
She leaned into him, taking comfort in his presence.

Evie was alive.

Her baby sister was alive.

Evie was Maggie, Magpie, right in front of her all along.

“What do you want to do?” Adrian asked, and she was pulled back to reality.

This was real.

Meaning, she had to do something.

There were two sides in this situation, after all. Nova’s was one.  
Then there was Maggie, Evie.

How much did she know?

Did she remember Nova at all? Their parents?

She had to tell her.

She had to tell Maggie, Evie, the truth.

Even if she hated her, even if she never wanted to see her again.

She couldn’t save her, but the least she could do was tell her the truth.

To say Nova hadn’t slept that night would be more than odd. She never slept. Her powers made it so that she had no need to.

Even still, if Nova was in the habit of spending her nights asleep, she would not have slept that particular night.

She was plagued by the sound of gunshots and her sister crying, the guilt of not saving her.  
She spent the night tinkering with her inventions, and was out the door the second it was deemed a reasonable hour. She didn’t want to get stuck at HQ with too much time on her hands and nothing to do.

But once she was there, she took a trip to the Artifacts Warehouse. She pulled Maggie’s file, and her own.

Every renegade was required to have a DNA sample on file.

She compared the two samples. They matched.

She ran it again, and they still matched.

Maggie really was her sister.

Not wasting another minute, she went straight to the lounges. That’s where Maggie was the last time she needed to find her.

And she was there now, too.

Nova stood at the doorway, frozen.

She had never really noticed it before, but now that she was looking for it, the resemblance was uncanny.

She could see herself in Maggie. Evie.

She could see her parents.

Her mother’s eyes, her father’s nose.

And then Maggie looked up and spotted Nova.

She scowled, and the way her eyebrows drew together was so, so familiar.

Nova drew in a shaky breath and sat down across from her.

Maggie groaned “What’d you want now, Insomnia?”

Nova opened her mouth, but couldn’t find the words.

“I didn’t steal your bracelet or anything. Not that I’d have any reason to, it’s a piece of junk, anyway.”

Nova now remembered why she initially hated the girl.

It didn’t matter now.

“I want to talk to you about something,” she said. “It might sound odd at first, but it’ll make sense at the end. Hopefully.”

Maggie heaved a sigh, though she was definitely intrigued.  
She didn’t say anything. Just stared at Nova through an exterior of hate and exasperation.

Nova took it as a go ahead sign.

She thought for a moment, searching for a way to explain this mess.

How do you tell a kid that her long lost sister is an Anarchist and a villain.

Was, a voice at the back of her mind corrected. Was an Anarchist and a villain. It sounded an awful lot like Adrian.

Should probably start at the beginning.

“Ten years ago, when I was six years old, my family was killed. I was able to knock the killer out. After that, my uncle found me and took me in.”

Maggie, Evie, rolled her eyes “Yeah, I know all that already. You’re practically a celebrity.”

“I had a sister,” Nova continued, and said sister fell silent. “Evie. She was eleven months old. When I heard the gunshots and saw my parent’s bodies, I ran and hid in the closet. But I left Evie in the other room. I heard her cry, and then a gunshot, and she stopped.”

Maggie shuddered.

“I thought she had died. The thing is, I never actually saw the body. I was six. It never occurred to me.”

Nova took a deep, shaky breath, willing herself not to cry.

She looked at Maggie, at Evie “When you were eleven months old, you parents were killed, and your sister went missing. You were shot, but survived. You got your powers.”

The previous scowl fell off Maggie’s face, turning into something more similar to disbelief. Shock. 

Clearly, she understood what Nova was trying to say.

“I ran your DNA, earlier. It was a match.”

Before she could say anything else, Maggie shook her head. Evie scoffed, disbelief in her eyes, and shook her head. “Run it again.”

“I did - ”

“This can’t possibly be true - “

“Maggie - “

“There must be some kind of error - “

“Maggie - “

“A bug in the system or - “

“Evie!”

Maggie startled at her own name. Nova did, too.

“I didn’t believe it, either. But it’s true. It’s real.”

Maggie, Evie, Nova wasn’t really sure what she should call her. She sat back with a distant, hard look in her eyes, her shoulders slouched.

Neither said anything.

Nova wiped one stray tear off her face. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I was too scared to save you, I’m sorry I didn’t find you earlier.”

Maggie didn’t say anything. Just stared right ahead.  
“I’ve waited ten years for my sister to come back,” she muttered. “Never imagined she’d be a villain.”

Nova winced.  
“I’m sorry,” she said, again.

“That bracelet…” Maggie started.

Nova smiled “Our father made it. His last creation.”

Maggie nodded, but didn’t say anything else.

Nova sighed “Look, I know we don’t exactly get along. But you’re my sister. I’m sorry I wasn’t here before, but I would like to get to know you or something.”

For a long moment, probably the longest moment of Nova’s life, Maggie just stared at her.  
And then, slowly, she nodded.

Nova smiled, wiping tears from her eyes.

“A few things, though.” Maggie said. “You’re not my mother, you don’t get to tell me what to do.”

Nova nodded.

“And don’t ever call me Evie like you just did. Not unless I say you can.”

Again, Nova nodded.

She would’ve agreed to a lot more if it would’ve meant she’d get her sister back.


End file.
